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About A.D. 1000, Vikings, led by Leif Eriksson, became the first Europeans to reach North America.
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Around 1000 A.D. the ancestors of the Inuit came to North America and settled in the Arctic Regions.
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In 1492, the exact date unknown, Columbus landed in America.
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In 1497, unspecified date, King Henry VII of England hired John Cabot to cross the Atlantic in search of a shorter route to Asia than Columbus. He may have landed somewhere between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
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In the early 1500's many fishing crews sailed to Canada. These crews had an important role in establishing the Fur Trade. They met Indians that wanted to trade furs for tools and other European goods. The trade thrived.
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King Francis I of France sent Jacques Cartier to the New World to look for gold and other valuble metals. He sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He landed on the Gaspe Peninsula and claimed it for France.
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On his second voyage, Cartier became the first European to reach the interior of Canada. he sailed up the St. Lawrence to the site of present day Montreal.
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On his third voyage, Cartier joined a French expedition with the hope to establish a permanent settlement in Canada, but the colony only lasted until 1543
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Samuel de Champlain founded a settlement along the St. Lawrence. He named it Quebec. Champlain made friends with the Algonquin and Huron Indians and began to trade with them for furs. The two tribes wanted the French to help them in their wars against the Iroquois Indians. In 1609 Champlain and two other fur traders helped their Indian friends defeat the Iroquois
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In 1610, an English sea captain named Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson Bay in search for the Northern Passage. England later based its claim to the vast Hudson Bay region on this voyage.
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In 1629, English forces captured the town of Quebec.
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The French regain Quebec from the English.
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King Louis XIV made New France a royal province (colony) of France.
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In 1670, an English firm called the Hudson's Bay Company opened fur-trading posts north of New France on the shores of Hudson Bay
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The boundaries of New France expanded rapidly to the west and south after Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, became the governor in 1672. The loss of the Huron fur trade forced the French to go farther inland to get new sources.
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Louis Jolliet, a French-Canadian fur trader, and Jacques Marquette, a French missionary, sailed down the Mississippi River to its junction with the Arkansas River. The French built forts and fur-trading posts along the Great Lakes, Illinois River and Mississippi River.
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In 1682, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the mouth of the Mississippi at the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed this land for France.
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This war lasted from 1689-1697
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This war was from 1702-1713
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France gave the United Kingdom Newfoundland, the mainland Nova Scotia region of Acadia, and the Hudson Bay territory.
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This war was from 1744-1748
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This war began in the Ohio Valley in 1754 and ended in 1763. It was the final struggle between the French and British colonists in America. The British captured Quebec City in 1759. Then the British seized Montreal in 1760, and the fighting in America ended. In the Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, France surrendered most of New France to the United Knigdom.
